These Were Newcastle’s Three Best Players At Wigan

Written by Dr. Ed Harrison

3:39pm Thursday, December 15th, 2016

Commented 41 times

It was a good professional win for Newcastle last night and now with 15 wins in 21 games we have a win ratio of 71.4% and if we can keep that up Newcastle will end up with 33 wins on the season and 99 points at least – and promotion.

It would also be a record number of wins in the Championship – that’s if we can keep it up.

Last night we had some good performances put in again by Mo Diame, Isaac Hayden and Jonjo Shelvey.

Mohammed Diame scores against his former club Mo is our Man of the Match with 42% of the vote and it was good to see him combine so well with Hayden for his first Championship goal of the season – and hopefully there will be many more this season.

Mo is a big strong player who is hard to push off the ball once he’s making a run and it’s great to see him coming into top form.

Second in the voting is Isaac Hayden on 21% and he’s one of the success stories of the season and he’s already a better player this season under Rafa’s coaching.

He’s an excellent technical player who makes things look easy – always the sign of a very good player.

Jonjo Shelvey has been in the top three or thereabouts of our poll for most of the last couple of months.

He’s becoming a good consistent player and the playmaker in midfield for us and he had another impressive game last night.

We’re going to miss him if he gets that 5 game suspension next week for his FA charge – but who knows – maybe Isaac Hayden can step up to the plate and fill in as the playmaker in Jonjo’s absence?

It was a terrific three points last night that put us back on top in the Championship table and now we need the same again at Burton Albion on Saturday afternoon.

That will not be an easy game and certainly not a mismatch as Burton manager Nigel Clough said in yesterdays’ press conference for the game.

We’ll be delighted if we can win the game and make it 3 wins in a row.

Great analysis. I’d love to see Mitro on in a game when the team is playing the right type of football for him to shine – getting crosses in the box and using him to hold up the play. I’d be excited to see him get out and get a few more goals to push for opportunities in future games.

Mitro’s in a bit of a bind being stuck behind Gayle whose goal record means he’s virtually undroppable at the moment. Maybe Saturday will bring some winds of change?

I don’t think Mitro can displace Gayle, but I can’t imagine Gayle can run as much as he did last night every three days. We’re about to head into quite the stretch of fixtures.

It would be very helpful to have Mitro as an option for games that fit his play-style given the opposition and the schedule that’s upcoming. This just gets back to whether or not people feel its useful to rotate players to keep them fresh.

Just a little bit about White Lightening cider. It was well known as the tramps tipple. However due to the bad publicity the company making it decided to withdraw it. Whether they just withdrew the name and called it something else I’m not sure. Jib and other “poor” folk from Pennywell will have quoffed gallons of the stuff.

League Placement

health update

I was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer in February 2017 and completed four months of chemotherapy in late July and will continue to have hormone treatment.

The cancer spread in the bones but it has been stabilized and has not spread further.

I am still recovering from some of the side effects of the chemo treatment - it's mainly severe fatigue and exhaustion.

Stage 4 cancer is not curable so I will continue to have cat scans and bone scans every four months to ensure the cancer is not spreading.

It is as it is - these things happen - and I will do my very best under the circumstances.

Ed Harrison

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